Running Before She Can Walk By Kate

Garish plastic toys that bleep, parp, bark, twitter, sing songs, challenge you to card games and demand a cup of tea while lighting up like a demented fruit machine, are every parent's nightmare. There's nothing so guaranteed to set your teeth on edge and start a migraine than the mechanical voice in one of these toys piping up for the hundredth time that day and shrilly inviting anyone within earshot to play, before launching into some trite nursery rhyme with relentless mechanical cheer.

As it happens, Rosie is even more dubious about such toys than we are. She tends to regard their unnerving noises and flashing lights with deep suspicion and will give them a wide berth if set down anywhere near her with the power on.

So rather pleasingly for us terribly-middle-class-don't-you-know parents, she's far more inclined to enjoy simpler more "traditional" toys like stacking cups and cube nests or soft versions of skittles and hoopla.

In fact, our Christmas present to her wasn't a shop-bought toy at all. It was a collection of odds and ends we found around the house, including jar lids, plastic tubs, tins, pegs and spoons. She plays with them all the time and endlessly discovers new ways of clashing them together, putting them inside each other or rolling and spinning them on the floor. This type of idea has a fancy name: it is called heuristic play and is a cracking scheme if you're a bit of a cheapskate.

The latest classic toy to get the Rosie seal of approval is the push-along truck she got for her birthday. Now she's getting more confident at standing up, the ability to not only walk but jog up and down our corridor is irresistible and she's very proud of herself indeed. So much so, she keeps stopping and giving herself a round of applause, then looking expectantly at us in the hope we'll follow suit. Which we dutifully do, of course.

Here she is in action.

Hands up!

The latest fun game with our darling daughter has been to put things on her head and watch as she delicately and predictably tries to reach up to grab them.


It's wonderfully cute, especially as her arms are still baby-sized and not really long enough.

when is a chair not a chair? - by Theo

When is a chair not a chair? Well, when it's a baby gym of course! I came home from work one day to find that Kate had improvised a little baby gym for Rosie by tying toys to the underneath of one of the dining room chairs. Rosie then lies underneath on the lovely quilted blanket my Auntie Debbie made for her and, voila, baby gym. At first she just stared up in wonder, but after a few days she started to grasp the fact that if she bopped things with her hands they would move - it's been invaluable for keeping her entertained!

Incidentally, it's no longer as morbid as it looks - the bear is now hanging by it's foot rather than its neck after I pointed out how unsuitable it was for a baby!

Making a mobile - by Theo

It was Friday, so I wasn't working, and I decided to make my daughter a mobile. I think we'd read somewhere that brightly colored mobiles are excellent for helping young babies to develop, so I figured it was worthwhile. I didn't really have a plan, so I just gathered together a load of stuff I thought would be useful.
Coat hangers, picture wire, scissors, ribbon, toothpicks, old cards, wrapping paper, present labels, cardboard, Christmas decorations, sellotape and glue - anything that could be reused. By this point I had got the idea of crossing two coat hangers to use as the main support. Then, after finding some nice gold cardboard that had come with a present for Rosie, I decided to use bits of that to hang further things. It also gave me the idea of trying to use - as much as possible - bits from the packaging of presents Rosie had received. That way the mobile really would be Rosie's.

Cards were cut up, wrapping paper raided, and cardboard shapes glued together. A snowman joined a rocking horse, a butterfly, a bunch of roses and an elephant dangling from bits of wrapping ribbon. After an interruption for dinner, the finished article was finally, delicately bound together and the resulting contraption hung above Rosie's occasionally-occupied sleeping spot.

Sure, it's not going to win any design awards but I'm pleased with it, not least because of the amount of re-using (as opposed to recycling) that went into its creation.

Naturally, I don't think Rosie has noticed it yet.